Starting young: How does education shape criminal justice?

What impact does formal punishment have on antisocial conduct? Does it deter or promote it?

A long line of research indicates punishment has the opposite-of-intended consequence of promoting future misbehavior. Deterrence-based hypotheses support the notion that punishment reduces future misbehavior. So, which is it?

Drawing on a nationally representative sample of British adolescent twins from the Environmental Risk (E-Risk) Longitudinal Twin Study, the pattern of findings suggests that contact with the justice system promotes delinquency. 

Children in residential care are disproportionately criminalised compared to other children. The Howard League’s work in this area has seen tangible success and won a Children and Young People Now. This part of the seminar explains how the charity went about tackling a seemingly intractable problem with a mixture of research, lobbying, practitioner guidance, and campaigning in the media.

This event will be particularly useful for researchers, students, and teachers.

'Blue-Sky Thinking' Seminar Series on Education and Criminal Justice

This seminar is the fifth in this series.

The series aims to re-establish the Centre for Education and Criminal Justice as the knowledge exchange hub for practitioners, policymakers and researchers to collaborate on collecting, improving, and disseminating the best and most promising evidence and practice in the field and internationally. It gives researchers and practitioners a space to discuss the 'blue-sky thinking' in education and criminal justice that is much needed in the current system.

Other seminars in the series

• Deficits to assets: Re-imagining a strength-based model of prison education
• Crime prevention: Where do we start and end?
• Where next for Prison Education and Educators?
• Prison life and creative arts: What can they offer to enhance education?

Related links

• Centre for Education and Criminal Justice
• Blue-Sky Thinking seminar series